What's the hardest reel to learn/play?

Ro3b · Post by **Ro3b** » Wed Sep 15, 2004 10:11 am

Is it really? I'm the first to confess my ignorance of course, but I've never heard it played that way.

lesl · Post by **lesl** » Wed Sep 15, 2004 11:21 am

Glad to hear Rob mention Finbar Dwyer. (hi Rob!) I have been wrestling
with Finbar Dwyer's, the Holly Bush, no matter what I do, not happy with
phrasing so far. Its such a great tune. A~AFA DAFA|~A2de fded ..
Reassuring to know its not just me.

cheers, Lesl

chas · Post by **chas** » Wed Sep 15, 2004 3:39 pm

I found Bunker Hill to be the absolute worst bear to learn, and I still find it the worst to play. It has some Cnats in sequences that I find really difficult, plus it's in a really counter-intuitive (to me) D Mixolydian. I'm not all that crazy about the tune, which is another factor that makes it hard for me.

One tune that I love that I fund hard to learn is the second tune in the first set from Frankie and Mairead's Ceol Aduaigh (a Tommy Peoples reel). I don't find the notes all that difficult, except the B rolls, but it has a lot of high-B's that are unaccented. It's very difficult for a novice to give it a good reel rhythm. Unlike Bunker Hill, I absolutely love this tune, and I don't find it hard to play now. My goal in life is to be able to play this tune like Frankie. Off to practice, it's not gonna happen by itself.

Random notes · Post by **Random notes** » Wed Sep 15, 2004 4:55 pm

Hi

I tried running The Pigtown Fling thru concertina.net to get a conventional staff format, but the site claims:

No image available -- there's probably a error in the ABC source causing the conversion to fail

I took out the exclamation points and fussed around with a couple of other bits, but I don't haved any facility w/ ABC format.
Could you have a go at editing it into something that Concertina.net will accept?
Thanks
Roger

Edited:
Um, never mind. I just put a top line:
X:1
and everything is just tickety-boo.

R.

Wanderer · Post by **Wanderer** » Wed Sep 15, 2004 5:09 pm

Random notes wrote:Hi

I tried running The Pigtown Fling thru concertina.net to get a conventional staff format, but the site claims:

No image available -- there's probably a error in the ABC source causing the conversion to fail

I took out the exclamation points and fussed around with a couple of other bits, but I don't haved any facility w/ ABC format.

Could you have a go at editing it into something that Concertina.net will accept?

Thanks

Roger

The only thing wrong with it is it's missing the indexing line..X:1

Code: Select all

X:1
T:Pigtown Fling 
R:reel 
M:C| 
L:1/8 
K:G 
GBge d2ed|Bdge dBAB|G2ge d2ed|1 B2Ac BEEF:|2 B2Ac BEE2:|! 
|:Beed efge|dfaf gfed|Beed efge|1 dfaf g3d:|2 dfaf gfed||!

AaronMalcomb · Post by **AaronMalcomb** » Thu Sep 16, 2004 12:27 am

Jayhawk wrote:Jig of Slurs - there's a hard tune on flute or whistle, and I still don't think even Matt Malloy's version sounds good - I tell, IMHO, it's an unnatural tune and proof of the devil.

Of course it's unnatural, it's a GHB tune. The composer, Pipe Major G.S. McLennan, claimed it was the most difficult he knew of and he wrote some of the best GHB tunes... I realize some of you may think good GHB tune is an oxymoron but I digress.

It's even more difficult with all of the GHB ornamentation. A lot of the Fs have doublings which are two simultaneous cuts.

G.S. also composed one of the toughest reels, The Little Cascade.

Cheers,
Aaron

TonyHiggins · Post by **TonyHiggins** » Thu Sep 16, 2004 2:20 pm

chas wrote: Off to practice, it's not gonna happen by itself.

Truer words were never spoken.
Tony

Brian Lee · Post by **Brian Lee** » Thu Sep 16, 2004 3:40 pm

'The Scholar' as played by Paul McGratten. The B section has a turn that just seems to tie up my fingers every time. The tune itself is fairly simple but just getting the fingers to move correctly, cleanly and at speed is another thing altogether.

Hornpiper · Post by **Hornpiper** » Sat Sep 18, 2004 10:58 pm

Brian Finnegan's tune 'Conlagh's Big Day' comes to mind - Great tune, really fun to play & I would imagine would pose great satisfaction to anyone looking for a challenge

DCrom · Post by **DCrom** » Sun Sep 19, 2004 5:55 pm

I think "most difficult to play" is partly a function of which ones you've tried to play.

I'm still very much a beginner with reels, but of the ones I've tried some - like "Rolling in the Ryegrass" and "The Bag of Spuds" were very easy to pick up, and others just seem to confuse my ear and fingers both.

My current nemesis is "The Boys of 25". It shouldn't be THAT difficult - Bill Ochs has it about halfway through his tutorial, for pity's sake! - but I find the tune hard to remember and the fingering tricky.

I'm consoling myself with the thought that once I get it down it will seem easy (the jig "Smash the Windows" used to give me similar headaches, but now is one of my favorites) but it sure hasn't got easier yet.

Update - Sept 22: Now that I've posted about my headache, it's suddenly clicked for me. Still smoothing out my playing, but I've got the bones down. This one is actually easier to play with moderate ornamentation (cuts/taps) than plain for some reason. I'm weird, I guess.

Joseph E. Smith · Post by **Joseph E. Smith** » Mon Sep 20, 2004 3:20 am

...Colonel Fraiser's, very quickly. Tough to give all those notes their value when travelling at near light speed.

Leel · Post by **Leel** » Wed Sep 22, 2004 7:41 pm

Ro3b wrote:
Hey, Dinky's is catchy! Thanks for mentioning it.
I thought it might sound, you know, dinky.
I have it in my head (no doubt from some liner note or other) that the title refers to someone named Dinky Doran, possibly a Donegal fiddler...? I imagine him as a very angry little man, always going around yelling "My name is Maurice, goddammit!"

Sorry to be a late bumper, but I just saw this and it made LOL!!! funny